The three of us left Leon’s room and I had a quick glance out of the window again before we went downstairs. The four students were still there, but they’d moved, and Sasha was now with them. She was signing something to them, but they didn’t seem to be taking much notice of her. I wished I’d been able to observe more of their conversation; I was sure there was something they were keeping from the police, something to do with Joe.

‘Hi Paige.’

I turned to see Mike behind me as I was walking to my car.

‘Hi. Sorry, I can’t talk. I’m not needed any more so I’m going home.’

‘You can’t be earning very much if they waste your time like this,’ he said, continuing to walk towards me. ‘I was surprised when I heard you’d gone freelance. How are you managing, doing it all yourself?’

‘Perfectly well.’ I had to resist telling him I had months when I was scraping around for every penny, but I bit my tongue. My financial difficulties were his doing, and part of me wanted to throw that in his face, but my current situation was nothing to do with him, and I didn’t want him to have any information that he could somehow twist to use against me if he wanted to.

‘What’s up, Paige? Why are you being so rude?’

‘I’m sorry you interpret my attitude as rude,’ I said, ‘but I just told you, I’m leaving.’

‘I thought if you’d finished work for the day we’d finally be able to talk. You owe me that at least.’

I turned to face him, arms folded. ‘What do you mean, I owe you?’

‘I know we didn’t have the best break-up, but you have to admit that I came off worse. You made me homeless and left me with nothing, when I had no idea you were even unhappy. If we’d talked about it, maybe things could have been different. I’m sure you’ve moved on now, but I thought we could at least be friendly, show an interest in each other’s lives.’

I couldn’t stop myself from rolling my eyes, and the moment I did I knew I’d made a mistake, because he took a step closer to me, making me uncomfortable.

‘Don’t roll your eyes at me, Paige, it’s rude. I’ve apologised and I’m trying to understand things from your perspective, but you’re not helping.’

I refused to rise to the bait and didn’t respond other than by raising my eyebrows. For a moment we stood there, almost nose to nose, until he laughed and turned away.